


Set Fire To This Life

by cerie



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-03
Updated: 2012-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-28 19:38:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerie/pseuds/cerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For velvet_midnight for the 2010 Sanctuary Ficathon, who asked for Helen/John, Helen/Nikola and the Five throughout history.  This is a collection of vignettes about Helen in her bedroom over the years.  Angst and character death. Title and sections come from Dave Matthews Band "Grey Street."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Set Fire To This Life

_she says nothing of what she thinks_

Helen hadn’t always been an independent woman. For the time, yes, she’d always been a little left of center but she had always believed she’d reach twenty five and be married with a husband and children. When twenty five came and went with Helen buried in schoolbooks and going nose to nose with the deans of Oxford to be allowed admittance, she swore that by twenty nine she’d be married. He wouldn’t be the normal type of man, the one who was already married to a slip of a girl no older than seventeen, but he’d be kind and possibly a bit eccentric. He’d love books and learning and encourage her to be everything she could be.

But on the eve of her twenty ninth birthday Helen wasn’t a woman married with children, nor a woman happily married to some eccentric professor, but the mistress of a man so enigmatic he defied all logic. John Druitt had his secrets and while he’d let her in to some aspects of his life, he was like a trunk with any number of hidden drawers and she’d only scratched the surface. He had locked bureaus and locked doors but Helen could hardly remember her curiosity about those things when he had her in his bed, fingers doing wicked and clever things to her body that no good woman was supposed to think about, much less crave the way she did.

“Helen. You’re thinking again.”

She shivered a little, the tone of his voice low and warm and far too dangerous for a woman like her. He’d coaxed her with that voice to share his coach on the way home from a lecture or to share his box at the opera. He’d used it to coax her upstairs to his rooms, first just to continue whatever discussion they’d had on the way and later so he could kiss her out of the watchful eye of chaperones and professors.

It was a double-edged sword, that voice, and she fell for it every single time. This time, she answered with a sigh and arched her hips upward, twisting toward the pleasure he promised.

With him, at least, she kept her tongue if nothing else.

 _she just goes stumbling through her memories_

“My God, Nikola! Have a care, would you?”

Helen rubbed her head where she’d knocked it against the headboard, wincing when she already felt a lump forming. Irritated, she pulled the sheet with her as she sat up, settling it around her breasts as she glared at him. It was terribly unconvincing to glare while naked and Nikola tugged at the sheet, mischievous glint already back in his eyes so soon after damn near killing her. He had a certain…exuberance and Helen understood a little how a small, crooked man like Tesla managed to bed some of the lovelier flowers that London society had to offer. He always knew how to pick a woman who never noticed he didn’t age and for that, at least, Helen had to give him credit. She always liked her men far too intelligent to fall for silly ruses like hair tonics and beauty creams as an excuse for not aging a day in two decades.

“Oh, Helen, you do take the fun out of it. If you wanted boring, you should have gone to bed with James.” Nikola tugged at the sheet again and Helen relented, huffing a little when his attentions drifted to her breasts and away from her face. She snapped her fingers, impatient, and tapped just beneath one eye once she had his attention.

“Up here, if you would. I don’t even know why I agreed to this ridiculous proposal of yours. No idea at all.” She tried to say it with some manner of exasperation mixed with disgust but it came out merely pathetic and rather weak. Damn. He’d see through that straight away, wouldn’t he? For all his flaws, Nikola Tesla was not a dim man. On the contrary, he was nearly as brilliant as the light and electricity he spent his days tinkering with.

“I remind you of what we had before,” Nikola murmured in a rare moment of sincerity. “We’re all scattered to the four corners of the earth, Helen, and you running into me again brings up the good times. Remember those nights in John’s flat, arguing about the latest theory of the day? I’ve never found anyone who can go toe to toe with me like you.”

There was admiration there, a good deal, and a tenderness that Helen wished she hadn’t seen. Nikola had been her choice because he was notorious for despoiling virgins and leaving them in hysterical messes a few weeks later when he’d moved on; he’d been with Helen for six months straight and, for all intents and purposes, he hadn’t strayed. She even had to concede his wandering eye at the opera. Italian women were notoriously loose and even Helen could appreciate the mezzo’s décolletage when she’d leaned over the way she had. He couldn’t be blamed for that one.

She sighed then and drew him down closer, the bristles of his mustache tickling the soft skin of her throat and his teeth just harsh enough to break her out of reverie. Memories faded, in time, but Helen’s memory was still sharp where John Druitt was concerned. She’d hoped Nikola would help her forget. She’d always put her hope in the impossible.

“Just hurry up and do what you came to do,” she ground out irritably, clipped tone trailing off into a sigh as Nikola curled his tongue around her, bringing on an orgasm she hadn’t wanted to give.

She wished she hadn’t been thinking of John at the time.

 _i dreamed myself a thousand times around the world_

A century passed, faces came and went and Helen, for all she adopted every new thing she could find, still felt unassailable. She was in her tower, as so many had told her when she’d bid them goodnight, and she felt it more keenly tonight than she had in a long while. Maybe it was the weather; Old City normally was quite mild but occasionally a squall would blow in off the ocean and bring the dark clouds and torrential rains that threatened them this night. The wind was coming in out of the southeast, best she could tell, and it whipped her hair around her face as she watched it from her balcony.

When lightning flashed she shuddered a little and shut the doors, turning back to her bed. It was strewn with books and papers as it often was these days and Helen was ashamed to admit that half the time she just shoved them over to one side and slept curled in a ball, trying not to move lest she disturb something and knock it off. Hardly healthy, she knew, but as little as she slept now it was hardly convenient to keep her work locked away in her office or one of the libraries; there was no reason it shouldn’t come to bed with her too.

The last gust of wind had blown a slip of paper from the bed and under one of her chairs and Helen bent to retrieve it, soft smile touching her lips when she realized what it was. James had always distrusted the telephone, even now when every house had one. Helen wondered what he’d do when that technology was ultimately miniaturized or worse, replaced somehow. It had to come down the pipes someday; humanity was nothing if not evolving and she’d seen more changes in her century of life than she cared to admit to. She tidied the bed, pushing aside the books and things she’d been working with, and read the letter she’d meant to savor when she had a moment.

 _H-_

 _I daresay, you never step foot on English soil. Will I have to get the hounds after you to get you home? I will, you know. I miss you terribly, even if you are a brilliant letter writer. The only thing more brilliant than your letters is the sound of your voice when you tell me these things in person. I miss that more than you could ever know._

 _If you won’t come to England, perhaps we can go to Italy instead. Your villa’s overdue for its seven year airing and I think the sunshine might do me good for once. Please consider it._

 _Yours for eternity,_

 _James_

The thunder crashed and Helen jumped, startled out of her cozy moment by a short and sharp reminder of reality.

“If only it were so simple to steal away, James. If only.”

She’d answer him by phone in the morning.

 _how did i come to this?_

“Mummy, I’m afraid.”

Helen wasn’t sleeping, she hardly did now, but she was still surprised to hear the small voice and see Ashley framed in the low light from her lamps. She’d recently been moved from the nursery to her own room just three doors down from Helen’s and equidistant between her room and the Big Guy’s, but tonight Ashley had chosen mother’s comfort over his. It pleased Helen in a way she couldn’t describe though she knew Ashley loved them both in completely different ways; perhaps it was just the idea of the tiny person who looked up to her in every way imaginable that just awed her in a way very few things had.

And that, the awe, meant Ashley was one of the few people who could bend Helen to her will with little more than a touch and a soft word. It was an incredible power gifted to a toddler who hardly recognized its significance and Helen hoped dearly that it never changed. Intellectually she knew that Ashley would change and grow and develop her own personality but for now, at least, Helen wanted to freeze time and keep her at a precocious four and still completely enamored of her mother’s every move.

“Come to bed then, darling,” she said softly, opening her arms and drawing her into bed. Ashley burrowed against her, tears stopping after a few minutes of petting and cosseting and she’d drifted to sleep in the way only a child could, brow completely eased of all worry. Helen hadn’t slept that way in years and years and she was envious of not only the peacefulness, but the potential Ashley represented. She had her whole life to become anything she wanted to be, a blank slate to muddy up with discovery and mistakes and everything between.

It made her feel even more impossibly lost in a world that was rapidly changing around her, a world that had left behind the mores and customs of her youth and traded them for a new set of rules that Helen learned only just fast enough to keep up. Oh, certainly, she was at the forefront of every scientific study, she spent her days negotiating treaties and racing to cure diseases, but her touchstone to this new world wasn’t going to be science or diplomacy, it was going to be the small girl in her arms.

For now, Ashley still sought her out for comfort. In ten years, would she do the same? In twenty? Would she stay close and share her life or would she want to eke out an existence on her own and carve her own path, uninterested in science and discovery and passionate about something else entirely? Too many questions for Helen’s taste and she’d long had the weakness of planning out the future before the present unfolded.

“Sleep, Mummy.” The voice was small but no less effective and Helen laughed a little in disbelief, eyes tender when she looked down to see Ashley had tipped her face up and squinted against the light of the lamps, eyes trying desperately to focus. She was beautiful and perfect and Helen hoped she’d stay this way for a little while, untouched by change.

She knew it was futile, to hope such a thing, but she turned down the lamps and started a story about a princess and a goblin, drifting to sleep with Ashley’s hand folded into hers.

Nineteen years later, after watching her disappear into nothingness, she fisted the sheets in her hands and screamed, but no one came. There was no story and no small hand in hers, just the lingering tang of ozone in the air from the teleport and even that memory, that scent, had started to fade.

 _she’ll do anything to fill it in_

“I’ve done everything I can think of. It seems you are your true self again,” Helen said ruefully, eyes a little moist as she watched Nikola over her wineglass. He seemed to be in decent enough spirits, despite his maudlin words, and for that Helen was grateful; she blamed herself for the loss of his powers as much as she blamed Nikola’s expansive ego and without him, the Five had dwindled once more. He leaned toward her, the tea tray drawn to him by some strange magnetism, and Helen’s mind was abuzz with questions. This, at least, she and Nikola could study and even if he was no longer immortal he’d at least still be an Abnormal, still something more than the human he wished so desperately he wasn’t.

It wasn’t out of pity that she let him draw her into his arms, though that was certainly what she felt for him after seeing him lose what had defined him for over a century. It wasn’t love in the traditional sense, given she and Nikola had never had anything approaching the fire and the passion she’d had with John before he’d changed, but it was constant. Nikola was a constant in spite of his own mercurial nature and over the years he remained a touchstone, even when he wasn’t anywhere to be found.

She didn’t let him take her back to bed because since building this sanctuary she’d kept that off limits. Trysts were held in anonymous hotel rooms or guest rooms within the mansion or, in the case of this one, on the couch in her office but never in her bedroom. Not since Ashley. Not since John had disappeared for good. Helen wasn’t sure why she needed that distance and that separation but something of her pensive nature much have leaked through because she felt a sharp scrape of teeth against her neck (teeth now, not fangs) and the hiss of Nikola’s voice.

“Stop thinking, Helen. You always think too much for my tastes. Don’t you think you’d be happier if you could just let go?”

She laughed, but she didn’t feel the humor. Nikola seemed to accept it because he resumed kissing down her neck while he deftly undid the zip on her dress. He was a good multi-tasker and that had her giggling again until he stopped and asked her what she was on about. It was bad form to laugh during sex and Helen knew that, but it was either laugh or cry. She had to get the complicated emotions out somehow and so she shushed him with a finger to his lips as she finished with the dress and tossed it over the back of the couch. Nikola watched her appreciatively as she undid his trousers and slid her own panties out of the way, sinking down onto him with little patience.

“I always did like stockings on you, Helen. I always counted you for a dirty girl, under all those prim English manners.”

She laughed again, the same hollow laugh, but it trailed off into a sigh as Nikola changed the angle, cock shifting the seam of her panties against her every time he thrust. It would be quick and messy and somewhere between the first orgasm (hers) and the wineglass shattered on the ground (his, as he lowered her down on the table to fuck her harder) she stopped thinking. It was blissful.

And after, when Nikola showed uncharacteristic concern by dressing her again and letting his hands linger as he straightened her skirt and combed through her hair she cried for all she’d seen and all she’d lost, and Nikola, for once, had no comment.

He always came back to her, in one form or another.


End file.
